Hello, Brothers and Sisters. Yes, it’s me again. I have been MIA, again, and that’s only because so many things have happened in this short time in my life. I wasn’t sure where to start or what to speak about, but the Lord has been prompting me to share every message that He has given me, and has even mentioned that He wants me to give you a little background on my life and testimony, in the attempt to give a context to the messages, with the hope that they will make more sense.
The truth is, that it terrifies me to begin this journey with you, guys. I can’t deny that it is also the will of the Lord that I do so.
But Hey, Obedience is doing what I’m told, right? Therefore, here I go…
For those of you that don’t or didn’t know, I was born and raised in Haiti. I came here back when I was 16, [and] lived here in the United States for under 2 years. I graduated high school and went on to live in the Dominican Republic, where the story really started. That’s where my testimony began to take shape really, which is of course where you’ll begin to have clarity about what the Lord has been doing in my life.
I was always a lover for sure. My understanding of love was always that it should be pure, untainted, and unconditional. And because of that, since very young I always wanted to love and to be loved deeply. The kind of depth that you see in movies sometimes. Well, maybe the old movies, because these days, the kind of love that’s being portrayed on TV is not love at all. I say all of that because my testimony has a lot to do with love, it has lot to do with my heart, and the way that the Lord is showing me that He has loved me, and teaching me to love.
Before I left home, the Lord showed me a vision of who my wife was going to be. I saw her skin color, the color of her hair… Her face was not very clear though… I think I was twelve, and somehow, I never forgot. So much so, that I started looking for that woman unconsciously and sometimes consciously, I guess. And little by little I started having girlfriends here and there. I started feeling this need to be loved deeply. And so I decided that I would love deeply so that [chuckle], deep love can find me. At that time, I didn’t know too well, nor did I understand, that this love I was looking for could only be found in Jesus. Therefore, I imagined that it could only come from a woman. And I started getting hit hard by these girls. So hard that it began to be clear early on, that probably the only girl that would always love me, unconditionally, was probably going to be a daughter, because these women were no joke, man!
Even so, I had faith in love.
I started and always chose to love deeply, and so the depth of the pain I would feel as a consequence was always intense. And that’s when I came to realize and identify the first biggest lie I ever was told to believe. That:
“A person can only fall in love once, or twice if they are lucky…”.
That, brothers and sisters, is a big lie. Because Love has no limit nor constraint. I found out that I was able to love deeper each and every time as if climbing a ladder, which as you will learn brought me to Jesus.
I was telling this to a brother recently and he said to me, “You are courageous, bro! I don’t think I would have ever done that.” And I understand him for sure, because who in their right mind would live like that. Well, I guess only me.
It all started when I fell for this cool girl at church growing up, the most beautiful girl in the whole church. Although knowing that I was crazy about her, she preferred my best friend over me, based on the fact that his family probably had more money than me. It was my best friend, so I decided that would be happy for him. The first time I began to love deeper was during my high school days. She was more or less the first girl that I had met when I began the school year when I traveled to the US. But soon enough, she just disappeared during the school year. Later I found out that she had gotten pregnant by someone. It didn’t hit me hard because I was new in the country, therefore my expectations weren’t too high.
Then there was another one, which was the only real Haitian girlfriend I ever dated. She left me because I was not tall enough nor “dark enough”. That one, for sure, hurt me a lot more because by then I had a mature heart. That’s also when rejection began to be normal in my life, and part of my day-to-day even with male friends, even at work and everywhere I went. And because of that, this extreme vicious fear started becoming part of me.
A couple of years later, I met this other girl, and with her came the deepest love my heart could reach down to. Man! at the time, it was something out of this world. Love poured out of my heart like the Niagara Falls.
She cheated on me once, I forgave her and started loving her even more. Then she cheated on me less than a year later, again. Not because I didn’t love her enough, she even later mentioned that she doesn’t think she’ll ever find a love like that again. But the problem at the time was because she wanted to live a certain way financially and wanted to travel to the US, which was always her dream. By then I was still in the Dominic Republic.
Well, needless to tell you that this one destroyed me…
I experienced a level of pain that I didn’t think was possible, and the fear of rejection reached another dimension. This feeling of not being good enough plagued me like a cancer. I was locked up in my room for a couple of months, not eating, and then I started going out again, I was drinking like crazy. I also started not wanting to be alone ever, which is why before the work day was over, I would go around asking if anyone had any plans. Wherever there was fun and drinks, I was there.
And during that period, is when I met my Wife.
Man, it was love from day one!
She was beautiful, fun, and the possibilities were limitless. And of course, again I started loving her deeply. We were always hanging out together. I would get out of work and meet up with her, and hang out until it was 4, even 6 am, Monday through Sunday. We did that for about 3 months until she found out I was Haitian, and she disappeared.
I know… Story of my life at this point, right…?
Well, months later she reappeared, and while we were at a friend’s house, she asked me to be her date for Christmas. I thought she was joking, so I just laughed it off and walked away. But what felt like minutes later, she made the same request again, and this time I looked at her, intently and I said; “You are actually serious…?”
Well, I considered her proposal. A month and a half later, we were married.
She told me that she came back around because she didn’t think she was going to find someone that made her feel so understood and that felt this way about her, that my love was safe.
Yea, I know… Story of my life, right…? I should have taken that as a red flag, I guess.
Well, 5 years into the marriage, I was feeling very insecure at the time. I didn’t have a job, and the prospects were crazy slim, so I was drinking a lot, and I had the most paralyzing fear that I would lose her. I always felt like I was not good enough because of the many comments she accustomed me to hearing, and she disappeared, again… She picked up everything and left me a voice message saying… “Adios, Rams…”
Man, I was like a walking zombie… The pain was so intense, that even when I was wearing the darkest sunglasses and laughing or smiling in a regular conversation, people would take a second look at me and say, “… Wow, I can see the pain in your eyes… even behind those glasses.”
I was married to her, so everyone that knew me, also knew about what happened.
Three months later, she called me out of nowhere, started showing up at my workplace every day in the morning— because by then I had found a job. And before I got into the building, she would always be there to see me off to work, and she would be there also at lunchtime, to have lunch together… She asked me to forgive her, and I did…
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